I don’t think you meant to reply to me, since I haven’t brought this up. But if I were a judge I think I’d try to classify religion for first amendment purposes, for otherwise you’d be opening the door to discrimination against atheists.
The argument
seems to work, seeing lack of belief counting also here.
Remember Hubbard transformed dianetics into a religion just for tax purposes, so religion in the First Amendment sense can be a little iffy.
They exist, but they’re mostly just throwing shit around on the internet, trying to look all edgy and cool. “Attacks” usually consist of smug image macros posted on Twitter.
Ah. They’re actually Russians then.
You are arguing based on your belief that the Bible is reliable history, which it ain’t. Based on the archaeology Exodus clearly did NOT occur as described. There were few Jews in Egypt at the time, the Egyptian monuments were NOT built by slaves but by paid workers in the off season, and the Israelites did not conquer the Canaanites since culturally and linguistically they WERE the Canaanites.
According to my textbooks in Catholic elementary school teachers in Soviet Union beat kids for believing in religion that wasn’t Glorious State and sent their parents off to gulags, so yeah, probably. 
Maybe back then, but not any more. Putin hates gays after all. 
I’m sure a court decision exists, I’m also sure that WorldNutDaily and The Discovery Institute ain’t never gonna be on my short list when I want as honest cite about a court case! YMOV!
CMC fnord!
Thanks to everyone else for making largely my point, courts ain’t in the business of deciding what is or is not a religion . . . except for the narrow purposes of Constitutional rights and statutory obligations. The SCotUS will hopefully one day get to decide if Scientology is a religion for the purpose of tax law . . . but they simply don’t have the Constitutional power to declare it to not be a religion.
I think that when a religious person starts to try to use reasoning to prove the existence of God, it means that the person has doubts, that he recognizes, perhaps without admitting it to himself yet, that belief in a deity has problems, that the existence of an omnipotent or omniscent entity seems to contradict various scientific principles, and he’s trying to see if he can resolve those contradictions. He may not consciously recognize exactly what that problem is, but he knows that he has two separate views of reality, one where matter and energy must be conserved, and there’s a limit on what one can and cannot know, and that cause must precede effect, and that information cannot be transferred faster than the speed of light, and another where all of those laws of science are totally invalidated by the existence of a deity, and thus there are no actual known laws of science. It’s a problem that seems to be easily resolved through logic. But the problem is that theism has no logic.
dropzone:
No, I’m arguing that the holy scriptures of the religion clearly states that it is G-d’s intention to prove his existence and power to those whom he expects to consider religious adherents. It’s not a matter of history, it’s a matter of how the religion - by the scriptures they’re based on, historically reliable or otherwise - defines its own religious “essence”. If the Bible says that G-d proved himself in order so that the Israelites should believe, then clearly it is not essential to Biblical religion that belief be without proof.
Seeing as how we don’t get the same personal hands-on action now that they got in the Old Testament, while it may not have been essential back then, “belief without proof” is essential in this day and age…especially since a lot of the hands-on action in the Old Testament turns out to be mythology/parable.
cmkeller, then ones religion is based on an easily disproved lie, which should be small comfort to a believer. This isn’t even like Christianity where there are people who could very well have existed and some events that may have happened, even if you discount the miracles. Based on the archaeological and historical evidence the Exodus flatly did not happen as described.
Science is all about “how”, and religion is all about “who”. They’re totally unrelated to one another, yet there are many who seem to insist that they somehow must be dependent upon one another.
It’s very simple. Science can explain how a star is born, lives, and dies. That’s it, end of story. Whether or not one believes that it is all some kind of cosmic accident or the product of an organized creative force is, in the end, an opinion that cannot be tested. Both sides of the issue need to live with fact.
The difference is that when done right science tries to get the right answer, not the popular answer. Religion does just the opposite.
There is a vast difference between “The answer cannot be known!” and “We are afraid to look for an answer because we might be wrong!” That “opinion that cannot be tested” crap? I’d buy that if religionists presented their beliefs as opinions and not facts that have been revealed to them…but for the most part they don’t.
Well, those who try to use the Bible as a scientific textbook are sadly misguided and absurdly off base. A Bible has no place in the classroom unless the name of the course is, “Major Religions Around the World”.
What I would like you to realize is that, more and more, young people who believe in a Creator are “non-denominational”, meaning that they don’t have any belief in the man-made dogma adherent to man-made religions. Instead, they are moved by spirituality instead of the rigid and faulted structure of organized religion, and this has been shown in dramatically shrinking Church membership.
I believe many religions are responding to this and becoming significantly less dogmatic. A good example is the Roman Catholics who now have a Pope who is saying and doing things that would have been considered inconceivable just a generation ago. Of course, all you have to do is look at the many religious fanatics who seem to abound almost everywhere to realize that there is a long, LONG way to go, but at least things seem to be moving in the right direction, albeit slowly.
How am I dead wrong here? I am pointing out that theologians that believe that atheism is a religion think that atheists believe in science as if it were a religion. I am pointing out that that is an incorrect assumption on their part.
You would agree with my post, if you had bothered to read it.
ETA: And the pope is no scientist, BTW.
No, but he and his predecessors have supported science for a long time.
Then there’s the Pontifical Academy of Sciences which has included (counting) LOTS of Nobelists.
I think it is to sooth cognitive dissonance.
I remember back in the day in the mormon church there was a push by certain members to find evidence of mormonism in ancient native american civilizations. The book of mormon isn’t thousands of years old and thus its harder to give the benefit of the doubt that somethings actually happened and some things are metaphor like the Bible. There’s no confusion, it IS meant to be taken literally, which means, there should be archaeological evidence that backs it up. If that doesn’t happen, it’s pretty damn hard to compartmentalize.
They found a few things, but it was up for interpretation and pretty big stretches of imagination. That movement died out and is no longer officially supported by the church.
But it was hilarious while it lasted!
Er, note that my degree is in archaeology. Knee deep in other people’s garbage you get your laughs wherever you can. :o
There was a guy whose name many here will recognize, who wrote a book that did that: Behold My Hands: Evidence for Christ’s Visit in Ancient America. It argued that old stone carvings of people done by ancient americans showed someone with holes in his hands, so that must have been Jesus!
And who wrote this book? Steven Jones, the very same guy who gave use the idea that the Twin Towers were brought down with thermite.
The term “crank magnetism” comes to mind.